For mobile operators this poses a challenge as their business models include a significant proportion of people taking value added services, especially 3G and data tariffs to add up. Of course the other way for businesses to balance the books is to reduce cost; in this instance the cost of servicing existing customers. Both these approaches rely in significant proportion on good web channel performance, so in March Foviance asked if the websites of key mobile operators are performing for the businesses involved and ultimately the consumer though an optimised online user experience?

You can read the free report online from the latest news section of the Foviance website.

Yet I am reminded almost every time we do testing that this convention is NOT widely known to even to regular internet users let alone relative newbies. Instead we see time and again users pressing the back button many, many times to return to the home page.

I have been advocating for a number of years that some assistance is given to users when sites choose to adopt this approach. My preferred solution would always be for a proper home link but sometimes that is not always practical. Second best would be to combine the word “home” or “homepage” with the logo. Again, for many very reasonable, practical and brand protection reasons this is also not always possible. My final recourse is to add the word “home” or “homepage” as part of a rollover state.

Sadly I can’t take the credit for this but Amazon have also had the same idea and more to the point have implemented it! If what is arguably one of the biggest brands online can do it then so can everybody else.

Hiscox you could argue then have their work cut out as they predominately offer “extraordinary home insurance” that is both expensive and comes with all the trimmings.

It is interesting to see therefore that the strategy they have fallen back on in their new brand advertising campaign is one of customer centricity through use of plain English. Clearly when recession is resulting in a falling market, value can be added to brands by understanding and aligning yourself with customer desires and simplifying your products even in the financial services industry.

The Extreme Group CEO, Al Gosling said, “Extreme has a long history of both branding innovation and association with alpine adrenaline living, but its not very often we get to bring these both together onto the streets of London.”

Clearly a great piece of innovative thinking based on consumer understanding and a well taken opportunity and centred on that element of fun!

Toyota has responded with their new iQ. A review of which can be found in the video here. It’s very like a Smart but better. This is an innovative car in many ways the increase in recycled materials and the innovative redesign of many mechanical parts to reduce size and therefore increase space.

Customer experience is a lot about how you feel about something. This car makes you feel special (smug?) through appealing to your sense of ethics but also because it’s innovative, and different, as well as a nice place to be.

Voice recognition systems have been around in cars for a while now and systems vary in quality and usefulness. Recently Fifth Gear, with the comedic help of a movie voice over man, tested the £1200 Mercedes option in the CLS, a £40,000 car against the £150 option in the Fiesta. The result was a surprise. The Fiesta won as it was much faster and still covered all the options the Mercedes version had. The message here is that the user experience of a product is a critical part of its appeal. If it works quickly and accurately what else do you need sometimes?

You can see the video here. The review summary begins at about 2 mins.

News broke in the last couple of weeks that they signed up an additional 171,000 brand new customers in the run up to Christmas. Many of these will have taken all 3 services in some variety or other. This is in no way coincidental. Users seek simplicity and by providing an easy way of “getting all 3” Sky have made it easier for people to buy. This of course also results in taking a larger share of this type of spend from each and every customer.

They are also now signing up HD customers (High Definition) at a much higher rate and Sky+ (their personal video recorder) is the default product of choice on the TV side. This shows how identifying where users are struggling with tasks they face in daily life, in this case setting their video, can create markets for new products. Similarly the provision of digital HD broadcasting has created a demand for better pictures from consumers and Sky has invested heavily in being the first to provide user friendly ways of getting it. Innovation is creating a new demand and the payoff on this investment is now arriving.

What does all of this demonstrate? That, even with a sophisticated proposition, it is possible, with a customer-centric approach, to reap significant rewards commercially.

To be clear the problem was not a hardware one. The input device, a dial with an integrated push button was very easy to work and had good tactile feedback. The screen was big and clear even in bright sunshine. The big problem came with the software. The structure was all wrong, the labels poor or misleading and the process for task completion long, complicated and unintuitive. So it was about time for a change and this came with the launch of the new 7 series.

Interestingly Tom Ford, the presenter of Fifth Gear, chose to demonstrate this by conducting what effectively amounted to an on air usability test. The review can be found here. The video starts with a broad introduction to the car and how he intend to test it. The iDrive section starts at 1m 30 second in. The participant in this case may not have been exactly target audience but should easily have been capable of the task. He was asked to set the home location in the sat nav system on both the outgoing and new 7 series. The time he recorded on the new one was half that of the old, a significant improvement in anybody’s book.

While the results are interesting what is more so is that it shows how important usability is to users even if they don’t know that’s what it’s called. While good usability may not get commented on as frequently or as publicly as press on poor products it certainly adds value, increases the customer experience of a luxury product leading to customer satisfaction and therefore brand equity. Clearly it is becoming a quality metric of the leading brands.

Over the 10 years I’ve spent with agencies I have worked with many many delighted clients. I have also seen clients who were clearly thinking “that report looks a bit thin” but then get blown away when the material is presented.

Does a well thought out 1 pager that you can put on the wall, pictorially describing the new concept and how it is interlinked with the complex business requirements REALLY FEEL like its worth the same as a 10,000 word report doing the same thing? Likewise, does a handful of wireframes showing the registration process as we feel it should be post research, replace a document describing and documenting the issues found with the old one and how to fix it? Do you need both? The analysis is needed to produce either option and similar time may be required to produce the output. The difference is in both the usefulness of the output and the perception of value.

Business certainly speaks, often, and at length about how research output is all about the value added to projects rather than the amount of production during the delivery phase. The larger the project, the more types of technique involved, the more participants and the longer the analysis time required to look at the data, the longer the report also tends to be; but should this really be the case and does a short snappy version feel like it’s worth the money?

Before answering consider the following story:

A man commissions a highly respected artist to paint a portrait of his wife as a birthday present. It is a very expensive commission and he is excited about the process and the work. Soon after, the lady arrives for the first sitting and spends an enjoyable morning with the artist. The very next day the artist rings the man and says the portrait is finished and ready to collect. The man is shocked but agrees to go and see the work. He is impressed but turns to the artist and says how can you possibly justify your enormous fee for a single day’s work? The artist replies that the work may only have taken a day to produce but the skill required to produce a work of such high quality and inherent value had taken a lifetime to acquire.

Everyone knows that if you ask a stupid question, you’ll get a stupid answer. What goes unsaid is that people sometimes don’t realise their questions are silly.

The classic example is the customer survey that forces people to invent opinions they don’t have. If you ask people what they think of your website the moment they arrive at the home page, you’re not going to learn anything useful about your order process.

In the same way, if you force people to tell you where they heard of your site so they can submit a registration, they’ll most likely pick the easiest option or just pick one at random. If you ask for personal data customers think you don’t need, they will revolt by filling in nonsense.

Blinded by office politics, companies can unwittingly ask leading questions, which only serve to return answers that reinforce their views. Such data can be valuable ammunition in the board room, but will do little to help the business. If you decide the answers before you begin, it’s not worth asking the questions.

Everyone wants a slice of the action. If you succumb to pressure from across the business to add questions, you’ll end up with a survey that tires participants and almost certainly generates a lot of data that can’t be actioned. The survey loses its identity, which will demotivate participants from completing it. They don’t mind helping improve your website or customer service, but they’ll shy away from giving the whole business an MOT.

Any ambiguity in the questions can leave you wondering what each respondent meant with his or her answer. Questions that demand concentration are expecting too much, so keep them snappy and don’t expect people to differentiate between ‘pretty good’ and ‘fairly good’ on a scale of one to ten.

To use surveys well, you have to decide at the outset what the goal is and how you will use the resulting information. Craft questions – with the aid of an impartial professional – to elicit honest and meaningful responses. Explain the purpose of the questions to participants, and demonstrate you’re listening by following up after the survey. Invite people to enter free text answers, but gather statistical data too so you can home in on those that matter.